Passage
by PrescitedEntity
Summary: When Terry is in dire trouble, Bruce has no choice but to use a dangerous viral treatment to turn back the hands of time. But far from making life easier, the change only causes further turmoil. All the while, Gotham's vices will not lie complacent.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: HAHA. I should really finish something other than a oneshot someday. Really. Well, hope this is a semi-interesting opening to the story. The plot... is really long and somewhat convoluted, so there's a fairly good chance this will never be completed. It's another nostalgia-trippy fic; loved BB.

Also because I wanted to put a spin on the ol' "Bruce gets young again" thing. That kind of thing HAS to have consequences, which I haven't seen dealt with all that much.

**

* * *

**They sat wordlessly on the ledge of Hamilton Hill High School in the warm afternoon, the slight breeze carrying the cool fragrance of fall. The graduation banner had long been removed; only the frame upon which it had hung remained like a skeleton. Terry would've chosen less morose imagery at the cusp of a change so dramatic and exciting, but parting with a second close friend in just a few days left him in a less than upbeat mood.

It was Max who finally broke the silence as the wind fell still.

"Hey, if you need me – "

"Don't worry about me. You've got your dreams to pursue." The words slipped out softly, but stood firmly in the stagnant summer air. Max lifted her gaze to smile at Terry, the sadness mirrored in his expression.

"I didn't think I'd get in. MIT. My god."

"Everyone else knew – even I knew, and you know how dense I can be," Terry said, a quiet laugh escaping through a sigh.

"I guess." As the fall zephyrs wafted through, the stifling warm air was replaced again by a stifling silence.

"Dana left yesterday. The Peace Corps changed her assignment to a small city in Bangladesh," Terry murmured at last, absently kicking a small shadow on the ground cast by an overhead bird.

"At least you guys are still on good terms." Terry recalled the conversation, strangely calm and devoid of dramatics. Dana wanted to volunteer and travel the world, and far from asking her to stay with him, he encouraged her to do so; high school had passed, and in the time of change, both agreed that there should be nothing to hold either back, no ties to bind as they ventured into adulthood. And so, with a kiss, they parted, promising that if nothing changed, they would reunite eventually.

"Yeah, it is." In some ways, he reflected, Max leaving was more painful than Dana, at least partially because he'd spent more time with the former in his nightjob, a thought which rang up guilt which he quickly discarded – this wasn't the right time to angst over Dana, not while he was spending his last afternoon with his best friend.

"Gotham State University, eh? Old man's keeping you on a short leash," Max chuckled.

"Nah, it was my choice, though I'd be lying if I wasn't a bit scared of what he'd do if I actually left," Terry replied with a smirk, "Probably give me one of those death glares he does. Only more literally, heh."

"I wouldn't be surprised," she replied with a fading smile. The final rays of daylight faded into the Gotham skyline. "I'll miss you, Ter. _Terr_ibly."

"You did not just pun." Terry stared.

"I just punned. And you really do need to take a break – you're picking up the old man's serious expression of seriousness," Max laughed.

"You are NOT leaving with THAT as the last thing you say to me in person," the young man huffed in mock irritation, "Or else the last thing you see of me in person will be the patented Wayne stare."

"Okay, okay! I take it back!" Max threw an arm over Terry's shoulder, spreading her laugh to him. It didn't last long enough for either, however, and as the laughs faded away, Max threw her other arm over Terry, a hug returned with equal sadness from missing someone still at his side.

"I'll miss you, Terry. A lot." The whispers spoken into his ear lingered, drifting in the air upon the gentle chill wind of a night of seasonal change.

"I'll miss you too, Max," he mumbled back, feeling as though his heart was sinking in his chest as her tears seeped through the fabric of his shirt. After breaking apart and a moment of staring everywhere but at each other, he sighed. Time couldn't stand still. "It's getting late. You probably need to finish getting ready."

"Y-yeah," she breathed, the last lingerings of tears shaking her voice as she walked towards her car, a present from Bruce Wayne to congratulate her being accepted to her dream school. Through it, she managed a smile. "I'll see you in a few months, 'kay?"

"'Kay." He forced a smile. "Good luck."

* * *

"You okay?" The deep voice seemed to have a softer quality to it for once, strained as it sounded. The former Batman had given Terry the week off, it having been uneventful for weeks since the apprehension of Shriek.

"Yeah."

"You've still got your family here." A curt statement, but it was Bruce – expected, and true.

"Ah, I know. It'll just take some getting used to," the young man replied. Not wanting to talk about the people now gone from his life, he quickly asked, "Anything interesting tonight?"

"Not so far. Some Jokerz, but the police took care of that already."

"Mm. Well, at least no one got hurt this time," Terry responded, pulling up the article along with other related ones on the computer from the past few weeks, detailing the increasingly violent gang activity – stabbings, beatings, brutal tactics and crime scenes that left his stomach reeling the first few times he stumbled on them. Through them, he came to understand Bruce's cynicism and impassiveness; anything less could eventually result in loss of faith in humanity. Still, behind every bizarrely painted face and garish wig, Terry saw a person capable of better, and he was sure that despite his coldness, Bruce did, too, or he'd have given up long ago.

* * *

They had just settled into a normal, not uncomfortable silence when the alert indicated suspicious activity. Going through their semi-standard exchange – be on guard, yeah I know, use your brain, 'kay, got it – Terry arrived at the doors of one of Wayne Enterprise's manufacturing division's buildings. After a few minutes of noticing nothing out of the ordinary, he made to leave when a sharp pain shot up his spine from his neck. A slithery purple-black tentacle slithered around his waist, lifting him and throwing him against a wall.

"Ahhh!"

"It's been a while," a seductive voice slurred, "Did you miss me?"

"Ow... No, I can't say I did," Terry groaned, vaguely irked at himself for his inattentiveness through the haze of pain he hadn't felt in weeks.

"Inque?" Bruce asked through the comm.

"How'd you guess?" Terry asked as he dodged a flying blob.

"You're losing."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," he grumbled as he jumped to avoid the fast moving inky pond, catapulting off the wall and throwing a batarang at it. The pond opened around the batarang, which embedded itself in the ground harmlessly.

"Still not learning your lesson, Batman?" Inque laughed as she reformed. "But this is taking too long, isn't it?"

"Well, I'd appreciate if you'd let me speed it up some," he retorted, throwing an electricity charged batarang at her, almost giddy at her cry of pain as it hit its mark. He racked his mind, trying to remember where the freezing batarang was before realizing that he'd removed it against Bruce's protest after four months of Inque's absence. His mental kicking of himself was abruptly interrupted by a blast of sound knocking him straight into Inque's waiting grasp.

"Shriek? Wha-?" His words were smothered as Inque enveloped him before throwing him into the air, where Shriek promptly blasted him into the ground. Unrelenting, Inque threw herself into the cracks and squeezed strongly, releasing only to allow Shriek to continue his assault.

* * *

"Terry? Terry!" Bruce yelled, met with only pained groans and screams, which gave way to nothing but the sounds of Terry's body crashing against rock, shattering glass. Monitoring his vital signs, the former Batman, nearly unflappable, broke out in a cold sweat; his young successor's breathing had slowed dramatically, his pulse weakening as his body took on more and more abuse.

"Shit." Bruce considered his options. By the time any help he called arrived, they may well be retrieving a corpse, and he could not face off both Shriek and Inque, especially not since his heart had deteriorated after a seizure. He saw only one choice – one that broke with his principles and was extremely unsafe – but he'd be damned if he let anything truly serious to happen to another protégé. He withdrew a large syringe from its place in a disguised safe and injected himself with its contents.

* * *

"This is incredibly satisfying," Shriek laughed as he propelled Batman upwards with a deafening blast, "Finally getting some revenge!"

"Oh, cap it, nerd-boy. I'm tired of this. We should just kill him and let it be over with," Inque said lazily, forming a sharp tip and preparing to impale Terry.

"I don't think so." A blur caught the limp figure and whisked it off, lowering it gently on the ground.

"Who's that?" Shriek asked, firing a burst of sound at the intruder.

"It's that other suit," Inque replied, annoyed. She launched herself at it, but it moved behind the still disoriented Shriek, using him to aim a blast of sound at Inque, who screeched as the waves tore her apart.

"Thought you'd win?"

"Ah!" was all Shriek could manage before the metallic suit slammed him into the wall. Just as Bruce was about to follow up, a crunching sound came from the direction he'd left Terry in – he turned, fearful of the worst, to find that it was nothing more than a stray slab that'd crashed into the ground near the fallen Batman. Terry's life being more important than apprehending the two at the moment – it was obvious from their inactivity prior to their assault on him that they had no other intent – Bruce picked the young man up and rushed back to the Batcave, blanking his mind to block out the worries.


	2. Chapter 2

"Rrrgh." Terry opened his eyes for a brief moment, and quickly squeezed them shut, overwhelmed by the maelstrom nature the world seemed to have adopted while he slept. He sighed, and quickly regretted that, too; his ribs seemed to jut into his lungs when they expanded.

"Awake?"

"Ugh." Without thinking, he tried to sit up, and regretted that most of all. "Ah! Damn..."

"What hurts?"

"What doesn't?" Terry groaned in reply. Then, as the memories of his last fight flooded into his mind, crashing on an already intense headache, he asked without thinking, "Am I dead?"

"No, but if you're asking that, you're worse off than I thought," Bruce's deep voice replied, tinged with equal parts concern, relief, worry, and irritation. Something seemed odd about the voice, but what with his temples pounding like pistons, Terry was rather more concerned with forming some semblance of a coherent thought.

"I...um...what?" He failed rather spectacularly as he pulled himself a little further upright on the hospital bed kept in the Batcave, the pain having subsided just below his battle-built threshold.

"Lie back down and go back to sleep," Bruce authoritatively commanded, and when Terry took too long to do so, he felt strong hands pressing him down carefully, so as not to hurt anything.

"Fine, fine..." He opened his eyes a sliver to make completely sure of where he was. Familiarity greeted his eyes – shadowy rock formations, pitch black corners, the glow of monitors – until they finally focused on the man hovering over him.

They widened to the size of small moons.

"W-what the hell? You're young again!" he babbled before choking for lack of air.

"Don't forget to breathe, McGinnis," Bruce sighed, holding the teenager still.

"Okay," Terry managed after a few deep breaths, "What happened?"

"You lost."

"I know that," Terry snapped, eyes shadowed by the feeling of failure at the stern deadpanned statement of fact, shoved aside only for his curiosity at Bruce's age regression, "What happened to you? Lazarus Pit therapy?"

"Don't be ridiculous. The Lazarus Pit was destroyed, and there would've been no way to get to one quickly enough. Go back to sleep – you need it to recover," the older man replied, fixing a stern gaze at the younger.

"Not until you tell me how it is you look all middle-aged again." Terry returned the stare determinedly, being by then used to it, and an awkward moment passed in which nothing was said nor thought.

Sighing, Bruce explained. "I've been overseeing the development of a retroviral therapy treatment since last year, after you recovered the Joker's crude genetic chip. It's made good progress, being a lot more reliable and sustainable than his crapshoot of a nanotechnological method. You know how retroviruses work, right?"

"By rewriting RNA into DNA and inserting it into the host, making the host produce more of the retrovirus and... You mean you used it to mess around with your genes?"

"In short, yes. Retroviruses to rewrite the genes to make rapid modifications and have cells replace themselves quickly, along with creating telomerase to lengthen telomeres – "

"To reverse some of the effects of aging. Holy shit." Terry stared at the ceiling and blinked blankly.

"Well, it's good to know you're bright enough to understand what I'm talking about," Bruce muttered.

"So wait, doesn't that make you pretty much... immortal?"

"Don't oversimplify things. There are many factors in aging, and also, the treatment is highly experimental. It hasn't been tested before."

"Then..." Terry tried to make sense of things, but his head refused to wrap itself around thoughts as it began to pound again.

"McGinnis, we can talk more about it later," Bruce stated firmly, "Right now, you need rest."

"But I'm not tired," the young man protested, sitting up a little only to gasp at how much every part of his torso ached at movement.

"One broken rib, multiple bruised, along with your sternum and your larynx. Internal bleeding – thankfully, not enough to warrant a trip to the hospital. Shoulder popped out of socket, mild concussion, and contusions all over. You're lucky to be alive, so you'd damn well listen to me, McGinnis, or I'll sedate you for your own good."

Terry closed his eyes as the words struck him like the blows they described, frustrated at his condition as it hit him how badly he'd had his assed kicked, so badly that Bruce resorted to extremely drastic action to keep him from death at his enemies' hands. More than humiliation, he felt disappointed in himself – he had thought he was prepared for anything after his confrontation with the controlled Tim Drake, and to realize that he'd gotten unwarrantably arrogant struck a sore nerve. Smothering a curse under his breath, he slammed his head against the pillow, which only succeeded in replacing his frustration with a haze of pain.

"Hey," Bruce muttered, softening the edge to his voice with awkwardness, "Don't be too hard on yourself."

"Hm. Not what you usually say."

"And you usually don't beat yourself up like this."

"I don't usually lose so miserably. Especially not after facing pseudo-Joker."

"It happens. Get used to it. You came back in one piece." Getting no response but a dejected scoff, Bruce plodded on. "I've informed your mother that you're doing overtime work for me, and will be paid accordingly. She wasn't happy about it, but said it was up to you, now that you're a responsible adult. That will save you some trouble in the future, I imagine, especially if you move into the university dormitory."

"...Yeah." With that, silence fell over the room, and soon after, Terry fell asleep, still physically exhausted, only vaguely aware that Bruce had left.

* * *

Batman's former protégé wandered the halls of the mansion, remembering a time when he used to live in it, smiling wistfully as he almost expected Alfred to chastise him about being up entirely too late for a child his age. Despite the inch of dust accumulated through the years since the devoted butler's passing, the place still looked oddly inviting to him the way it would never to most anyone else. The faint happiness at reminiscence disappeared as footsteps approached, and Dick Grayson turned to face the man who'd mentored him so long ago.

"Well, I'm guessing we can continue our conversation now, Bruce," he remarked coolly.

"I don't see that I have a choice in the matter. You won't leave until you're either satisfied by or irritated enough with me." Dick averted his gaze at the stern stare the former Batman gave him; he'd never been good at returning such an intense look, and he didn't know many who were. Still, he continued firmly – he'd long grown past being intimidated by it, at least.

"I don't care that you used whatever treatment you did. Drastic occasions call for drastic measures. But that was an occasion that shouldn't have had a chance at occurring, and you know it," he accused, the chill in his voice thinly veiling anger, "You haven't been training the kid at the level he should've been trained, and he's paying the price for it. And yet even now, you're going to let him keep going as Batman."

Bruce sighed wearily. "I can't take this from him – by now, it's ingrained in him whether I like it or not," he stated, words met with a dubious cough from Dick, "Up until now, it's never been necessary. The suit – "

"Is a damned crutch, and one he can't even rely on – which is why he's lying in the other room with severe injuries, and why you've overridden your own principles," Dick retorted, "Now that you've got the ability to train him, you'd better rough him up – or someone else will, and I don't think they'd have as good of intentions as you do."

"I know that very well. And I fully intend on making sure that Terry will never – _never _– ", Bruce repeated with heavy emphasis, expression hard and severe, "Lose a fight for this reason again."

"Good. Because I'll wager I'm not the only one you'll have to deal with if he does. I'll be monitoring him, and he'd better improve, or he's not the only one who'll have to answer for it." With that, Dick turned and walked away, hiding the frustration simmering beneath his cool exterior that the first time he'd spoken to his past mentor in years had to follow the same antagonistic pattern that they'd developed years ago. _Some things_, he thought to himself wistfully, _never change_.

* * *

A/N: Dropping chapter titling because it just doesn't suit. Chapter's a bit short, but it seems to have cut off too well here for me to go on. Hope it's not falling into the realms of boredom.


End file.
